Friends indeed? (19112008)

It is said that friends in need are friends indeed. Pakistan is finding this out. The forum 'Friends of Pakistan' established by the outgoing US President Bush has met three times so far and all we have is announcement of further meetings and promises of future co-operation in a number of fields.
Translation: Friends of Pakistan are not coming forward with any significant or substantial contribution towards saving Pakistan in the current crisis.
One could argue that they are being wise and are in fact helping or rather forcing us to put our own house in order. But then why do we need them in the first place? The premise was and is that Pakistan in its hour of need and the time of crisis can depend on some friends, just as we as a nation have always taken a posture that when a brother country is in trouble we are ready to jump in the ring to fight ourselves, thus, our nuclear weapon is dubbed as "the Islamic Bomb".
The current developments must have defining impact on our foreign policy. We must start following an agenda which is for the people of Pakistan and only for the people of Pakistan. And people of Pakistan should mean all of the 200-hundred-odd million people, not just a few hundred thousand or millions belonging to one martial institute. This number should not include the people who are not Pakistanis, though they may aspire to become Pakistanis or we may desire for them to become Pakistanis.
Once we focus on the people of Pakistan and what is in their interests then things would become simpler. For example, we must stop thinking about Ummah, the whole Muslim world is not our problem. Nor are we the flag bearers of Islam neither has God sub-contracted the religion Islam to our custody! We should worry about our own problems and send a clear message to the world that we are not aspiring to become leaders of the Muslim world, in fact it will be an achievement if we manage to just keep our own country intact, something our defense establishment has failed to achieve. The world and especially our brother Muslim countries should also realise that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is not for sale or lease or friendly use, even if they are attacked by Israel.
The policy rethink must also establish the parameters for our intelligence agencies, who are a law unto themselves and often act like a state within a state, and we must ensure that we are neither involved nor accused of indulging in the past times which are better suited to CIA or to a proxy of a super power.
The world has told us and our friends have spoken with actions louder than the words, we are on our own. Let us start looking within and try and put our own house in order. We have wasted sixty years trying to win wars, we have neither been prepared for nor willing to fight. We have played double games with our friends and allies and we have mismanaged our economy and national affairs to the hilt. We have aspired to win Kashmir and failed, attempted to manage Afghanistan by proxy and failed, all that we seem to be good at is conquering Islamabad and winning/waging wars against our own people. In the process we face the dismal prospect of either losing the whole country to militants and suicide bombers or its dissolution in pieces.
We need to not just fix our economy but also our foreign policy because the two are inexorably linked. And sooner we do that better it will be, this will only be possible with a strong and sustainable democratic government, which we are even now not allowed, given all the rumor mongering within Pakistan. What we are seeing in fact is the proxy war between the democratic forces who are trying to put the country back on track and the forces of dictatorship who are trying to defame and derail the elected government, Déjà vu.